There is no place like ether

For those of us increasingly reliant on email networks in our everyday social interactions, spam can be a pain; it can annoy; it can deceive; it can overload. Yet spam can also entertain and perplex us. This book is an aberration into the dark side of network culture. Instead of regurgitating stories of technological progress or over celebrating creative social media on the Internet, it filters contemporary culture through its anomalies. The book features theorists writing on spam, porn, censorship, and viruses. The evil side of media theory is exposed to theoretical interventions and innovative case studies that touch base with new media and Internet studies and the sociology of new network culture, as well as post-representational cultural theory.

via The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture(Parikka, S: Hampton Press.

Slide Show: Cell Phone Data Gives Picture of Human Movement | Online NewsHour | PBS.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a contract for up to $34.5 million to The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., to manage the development and testing of the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) system on human subjects, using a brain-controlled interface.

APL scientists and engineers developed the underlying technology under DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, an ambitious four-year effort to create a prosthetic arm that would by far eclipse the World War II era hook-and-cable device used by most amputees. The program has already produced two complex prototypes, each advancing the art of upper-arm prosthetics.

via APL Awarded DARPA Funding To Test Prosthetic Limb System.

Le coeur artificiel totalement implantable a fait son entrée à la Bourse de Paris mercredi par le biais de la société biomédicale Carmat, afin de lever les fonds nécessaires pour poursuivre son développement et pouvoir passer aux premiers essais cliniques l’an prochain.

via Le coeur artificiel entre à la Bourse | Brigitte Castelnau | Hors cote.

TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense — Video

By Kim Zetter February 5, 2009  |  12:59 pm  |  Categories: Miscellaneous

LONG BEACH, California — Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will, then dispel them like smoke when they’re done.

Pattie Maes of the lab’s Fluid Interfaces group said the research is aimed at creating a new digital

“sixth sense” for humans.

via TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense — Video | Epicenter | Wired.com.